What is your association with the Cambodian genocide?

I am the child of survivors as well as the only person in my immediate family who didn’t experiencethe Cambodian genocide. I was actually born after my family had escaped and smuggled themselves across the border of Cambodia into Thailand. I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand when we came to the United States.

What rights were violated during the genocide?

Gosh, so many, I guess you can start with the seizure of property by the Khmer Rouge government. Followed by the lack of security and theextra-judicial killing, the killing of people, not in the context of capital punishment. I guess you can call it the right of security, the right to life and liberty.

Who was responsible for this Cambodian genocide other than Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge? Were there any other events or people which may have..?

I would say that other senior leadership in the Khmer Rouge as well as the geopolitical context of the time that included a lot of instability. Why do you think it’s important to inform others about this genocide?

Well if you think that there is something individuals can learn about history in order to avoid or prevent events of the past, then I think it is really important to study these kinds of failures of government and of revolutions  in order to prevent them in the future.

How did the genocide affect your life?

Well I wouldn’t have been born physically if this hadn’t happened to Cambodians and to my family and I obviously wouldn’t have had the opportunity to come to the US if I wasn’t born…and my family would look very different than it does today.

Although the genocide was very negative and it should never happen again, but were there any positive contributions from it? Did it improve anything? Like the industry or the government?

Well no to both of those because industry, private enterprise was entirely whipped out so all types of business were eliminated essentially over night. So there was huge decimation of economic value. No to the government side because of the terrible government that no one wants to replicate. You don’t hear a lot of people wanting to go back to glory of the Khmer Rouge time.  You know I can’t think of very many good things. I really can’t.

(I thought of one good thing) The Khmer Rouge had a strong value of gender equity. Women served at the highest levels of the government, in military and did much of the manual labor along side men.

Do you think this genocide could have been prevented? If so how?

Khmer Rouge represented a failure of leadership. But I think the regime that allowed the Khmer Rouge to come to power such as the Lon Nol regime which were remarkably inept. Then King Sihanouk himself who at one point supported the Khmer Rouge and helped them gain more popular support, also a hugely inept leader.  These were the players that allowed the Khmer Rouge to come into power.

Do you think life was better during the French Protectorate or as it is right now?

Well it’s hard to say because Cambodia is in a transition right now and so both periods were periods of instability. Economic growth was not very high in either scenario. I would say that

living under the French colonial system was not favorable or helpful to the Cambodians at all. I think just the psychological toll of living in a country that you aren’t running was not something people would not choose again. Even though things may have been slightly more stable, and there was slightly more infrastructure during the colonial time.,The sentiment in Cambodia today is that people can change the destiny of their country and that’s significant. What made the people celebrate Pol Pot and follow him and believe in him?

Well I think he had a message that was very seductive – his message about equality and about raising up of the poor in order to build a country. But it turned out to be entirely wrongheaded and not something that was accomplished by Pol Pot at all.

Do you think anything in his early life could have influenced him to do what he did?

Well he was educated in France, and during that time, the groups he would hang out with ascribed to a certain ideology that was being promoted. An idealogy about communism and socialism. I think for a lot of people in the educated class of the World world, in the US and in Europe, they were supporting the ideology of communism and socialism and as they could see the failures of other forms of government.  It was a very popular idea that people were circulating, so he was part of that movement. That group of fairly idealistic young people that felt they could transform their country by bringing about a revolution.